Soy milk surprises

Ours is a two-carton household. Half of the family can drinkonly soy milk, while the other half can pour 2% over breakfastcereal until the stuff floats, with no apparent adverse digestiveeffects.

Cereal was the sole reason we stocked soy milk in our fridgeuntil the other evening, when I was in the last stages of mashingpotatoes for dinner and discovered we were out of milk. “No we’renot,” my oldest son corrected.

I looked suspiciously at the carton of soy milk in his hand.It’ll never work, I thought darkly. But the two members of thefamily who weren’t privy to my last-minute recipe change cleanedtheir plates more quickly than usual. The soy had given thepotatoes a nutty flavor that we loved.

What other dishes, I wondered, might benefit from that flavor?This month, an obvious candidate is pumpkin pie, which can lurelactose-intolerant souls to their dairy doom. Turns out it’s assimple as substituting a little less soy for the evaporated milkmost recipes call for. In our tests, the plates came backclean!

MORE SOY SUCCESSES

The slightly sweet, nutty flavor of soy milk is particularlywell suited to recipes based on plant foods. To substitute soy milkfor regular, just reduce the amount of milk called for in yourrecipe by about 20 percent. Here are just a few dishes in whichwe’ve substituted soy milk for dairy with delicious results:

Quiche. Soy behaves well in pies, sweet or savory. It tastesgreat in a vegetable-laden quiche.

Cream of mushroom soup. Soy’s flavor is a distinctivebackdrop for earthy mushrooms. Make sure you don’t boil the souponce the milk is added.

Muffins. Soy adds complexity to fruit-studded muffins. Weespecially like it in blueberry ones.